Browse Food & Drink

Browse Promos + Events

Browse Subscribe

As Iran goes, so goes D2?

The Byron Miller campaign, which lost Saturday's District 2 election runoff to former City staffer Ivy Taylor by 54 votes, is alleging election fraud and irregularities, including dead voters, pre-filled-in mail ballots, and multiple voting. But Elections Administrator Jacquelyn Callanen says that while she doesn't want to call the county's election system failproof, "we have a very good voter-registration database."

The system is designed to catch double-voting, with real-time voter head counts during early voting, and a pre-marked list for election day, says Callanen, and the only way dead voters are running elections from the grave is if they passed on to their greater rewards after casting legitimate ballots.

Perhaps the most troubling charge made by the Miller campaign is that voters received mail ballots already filled out for Taylor.

Well, not impossible that someone printed out the sample ballot that's available ahead of elections online and mailed it to folks, but even if those ballots were returned, they wouldn't be counted, Callanen says, because they'd be missing the unique serial number printed on every official mail ballot.

Callanen says that a returns report that was posted around 8:15, subsequently pulled down, and replaced with new numbers later in the evening is an example of the system working: the numbers hadn't beeen "critically double-checked" before they were posted on the Bexar County elections site, and once they realized there was an issue, they essentially ran the numbers from scratch before re-posting. The new numbers "changed all of the `runoff elections`."

Miller can challenge the offical tally by petitioning the Mayors' office for a recount -- a plea that must be accompanied by a cashier's check for $7,215 -- no later than next Monday at 10 a.m., but if they want to challenge the voter rolls, that'll take a lawsuit.